How to salt your croissant.

You know how rumour has it that engineers are supposed to solve problems for the good of mankind, identified as "real-life" problems. And a canard doing the rounds is that IIT's don't train their wards to solve these "real-life" problems. Well this will show those misinformed maggots.

So, here is the problem. You were hungry, so you picked up a nice roll of baked product, which we can assume to be a hot buttered croissant without loss of generality. You knew that the bakers in an effort to save some currency would skimp on adding important granular ingredients like salt. It could be sugar too. So, you planned ahead and took along a salty (or sugary) pouch from the counter. Now you are walking down the street and want to salt your croissant. But, damn! Due to the glazed surface of this baked delight, no doubt a result of copious amounts of butter being utilized during its recent hot past, all those little salty granules that would lift the average croissant from being just another mundane example of baked flour to something beautiful that nations might fight over or something that Paris might have offered in exchange of Helen, all these kernels of salty delight just slide down on to the ground, causing numerous little bugs and slugs to keel over with brain haemmorage and dehydration.

Now that is a long sentence. If you get past that, do let me know.

Anyway, how in the name of Jason's mask do you get the salt to stick?
This is where your IIT training comes through. Where all thos years of solving hard problems with simple models helps on out. Don't know the answer? Well, you should have worked harder in your 12th grade, rather than chasing after girls wanting to become their "rakhi-brothers". Pervert. Of course, the obvious answer is you spit on the croissant. Deposit a nice even layer of sticky saliva on its warm glazed surface, and voila, the salt, it sticks. You feel pretty dumb now don't you. Well, not everyone is born equal...

Now the good researcher alwasy finds ways to extend the problems he solves. Here are some possible extensions along with simple fixes:
1. What happens if you run out of saliva (and your tongue tastes like carpet)?
Ask helpful strangers. Or, go play GTA Vice City to pick up helpful hints about contacting salivex.

2. What if you have forgotten take a baggy of salt along with the croissant?
Sneeze. Particularly easy if you have a good common cold (come on, it is called common cold for a reason), or picked up pepper instead of salt.